Grand Trunk Western 4070, a steam locomotive built in 1918, tumbled head-first into a turntable pit during a freight run outside Detroit in 1955.
It took three days to fish the locomotive out of the hole, and the fall gouged a deep crack in its cast steel frame. Workers patched it at the time, but a few decades later, the frame splintered again in the same spot.
Just last year, that crack was permanently welded together inside a railway roundhouse tucked among Cleveland’s steel mills on the banks of the Cuyahoga River.
It was a critical and expensive hurdle in the locomotive’s restoration, a project that will, when all is said and done, eat up something like $1.2 million from the coffers of the Midwest Railway Preservation Society. Founded in Cleveland back in the 1940s, the society has been quietly shaping and — as its name suggests — preserving America’s railroad history for generations.
From train tours to restoration jobs
Part historical society, part restoration shop, the Midwest Railway Preservation Society is a humble operation fueled mostly by grit and passion. Still, it punches above its weight in the world of railroad enthusiasts.
The society started with “a bunch of guys that liked trains, and they smoked cigars and wanted something to do on Saturdays,” said Executive Director Steve Korpos.
They started collecting trains and hosting trips out of Terminal Tower throughout the mid- to late 20th century. They took Clevelanders all over, from county fairs to far-off destinations like the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls, all the while building up a repertoire of passenger cars, cabooses and locomotives.
Grand Trunk Western 4070, when it was still running, became the first locomotive to pull passengers on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad in 1975.
Today, those same train cars, along with some newer ones, rest on the rails surrounding the Midwest Railway Preservation Society’s headquarters in a former Baltimore & Ohio Railroad roundhouse off Quigley Road in Cleveland. Nowadays, the society deals more in restoration and storage for private collectors.
Going-To-The-Sun Mountain, a passenger car from the Great Northern Railway, sits just outside the society’s roundhouse today, but stepping inside is like moving through time. It appears just as it did when it ran decades ago, complete with ashtrays and mail boxes. It even operated as an almost mythical bar in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for nearly two decades.
Now, the society stores it for Ben Ringnalda, a Great Northern Railway historian and airline pilot in the Netherlands who bought the car in 2019.
The Midwest Railway Preservation Society is also booked out for more than a year with restoration projects. In addition to some lighter fixes, paintjobs and sales, the society took on a job turning a trolley car into a standing building for the city of Riverdale Park, Maryland. They’re in the midst of completely rebuilding the streetcar’s structure to bring it up to building codes so it can serve as accessible restrooms.
‘Working with the old timers’
Beyond the equipment and history, the Midwest Railway Preservation Society is also about passing down mechanical knowledge. The society’s most dedicated members, many of whom volunteer, don’t just understand how steam engines work conceptually, they know, practically, how to make a steam locomotive hum.
“Out of a country with, what, 300 million people, there’s probably only maybe 2,000 or 3,000 that might know how to do all that,” Korpos said.
Korpos spent his career as a heavy equipment operator and prototype pattern maker for Ford Motor Co. He only enjoyed retirement back in 2009 for a few months before growing restless, so he stopped by the Midwest Railway Preservation Society after seeing an ad in the paper.
They put him to work.
“They wouldn’t let me leave unless I joined,” he said. “They dragged me in here, ‘Oh, that steam engine’s got a lot of cast iron parts.’”
Many of those parts can’t be bought anymore, so Korpos and his team have to figure out how to manufacture them from scratch. It’s been a two-way street, though. Korpos has picked up a lot of skills he never would have learned otherwise.
“We’ll teach you how to weld, paint, you know, body work, machine, learn how to make parts,” he said. “We brought a lot of kids through here, and some got good careers. We got kids that came in here now working for the railroad.
“I learned a lot more by working with the old timers here than I would have reading books on how to do this stuff.”
A big step for 4070
“That steam engine” society members pointed out to Korpos when he first visited was Grand Trunk Western 4070. It’s the Midwest Railway Preservation Society’s crown jewel. Greg Antz, one of the society’s board trustees, is heading the project. He’s been part of the organization since he was a teen.
Antz has always been interested in trains, he said, so while his dad was teaching him how to drive one afternoon, he directed him to the roundhouse. That was about 15 years ago. Antz has been in the roundhouse pretty consistently since.
Grand Trunk Western 4070’s run on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad came to an end in the early 1990s after some of its more expensive parts wore out. By that time, the frame crack had begun to show up again. So 4070 has been dormant in the society’s roundhouse as its members raise funds to bring it back to life.
Fixing 4070’s frame crack last year cost about $58,000. Welders had to cut out a chunk of the frame, Antz said, and jam about 100 pounds of molten steel back into it.
‘However we can make money’
That repair was a huge milestone for the Midwest Railway Preservation Society, which has been steadily growing for the last decade or so, Antz said. When he first joined, the organization was still trying to find its place in the rapidly changing railroad industry.
The society took over ownership of the roundhouse, which it had been leasing, in 2007. A chunk of the century-old industrial building had collapsed earlier that year, and after the society got the deed, maintaining the building fell squarely on its shoulders. Saving the rest of the structure was going to take money the society didn’t have at the time. That’s on top of the dollars they needed to restore 4070.
When Korpos joined in 2009, the society’s membership had fallen to just about 30 people from a high of more than 1,000 in its heyday. He worked his way up to the organization’s helm with the idea to lean into restoration and other odd jobs to fund in-house projects.
That strategy has worked out, but it’s not easy.
“We still struggle, but you know, we became diversified,” Korpos said. “In other words, we just didn’t worry about doing our stuff. We decided, let’s make money, however we can make money, to do our stuff.”
Restoration jobs bring in cash, but it will likely take years of saving and fundraising to net the kind of money they need for the roundhouse and 4070. The society has about 120 members now, each of whom pay $45 per year, but even that isn’t enough hands to take on all the work they’d like to.
Hundreds flock to the roundhouse
During this year’s Cleveland History Days celebration, though, the number of train enthusiasts and families who flocked to the roundhouse made it clear that there’s an appetite for railroad history in Cleveland. During the event, the American Steam Railroad Preservation Association, another railroad historical organization, debuted the second iteration of an iconic steam locomotive: The American Freedom Train.
Their team had been leasing workspace from the Midwest Railway Preservation Society. Maybe it was the sound of the train’s whistle echoing through the valley, but the event drew hundreds.
Steve Emling, the society’s board president, looked out at the yard teeming with visitors from the back of a passenger car. He grew up off West 130th Street, right next to a busy train track.
“I was out watching trains one day, and the conductor came out of the caboose and said, ‘Hey, c’mon up,’” Emling said. “And that’s all it took.”
He left Cleveland a while back, working at the California State Railroad Museum for 26 years. He moved back to Cleveland and took the helm of the society in 2011.
“We haven’t had this many people on the site in probably 10 years,” he said during the History Days festival. “This is wonderful.”
